


Wings

by sylph_feather



Series: Monsters and Men [2]
Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Monsters, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Gen, Stream of Consciousness, changeling!veronica, introspective, not a lot of dialogue y'all, yeet more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 16:00:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13930434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylph_feather/pseuds/sylph_feather
Summary: Flight is life to her, and she grasps at it like she is suffocating from society and it is air.





	Wings

**Author's Note:**

> You should probably read the first in the series to understand this.

When she is five, Veronica discovers blue scales on her arms and neck. As she fiddles with them, they disappear. She is young enough that she merely giggles. 

Slowly, they start to appear more and more frequently over the weeks, and she treats it as her own little secret. It’s more entertaining to keep it hidden, as the scales quickly lose their entertainment value after the first few times. Keeping it coveted to her heart makes her feel special. 

She only shows a smaller Martha once, and she claims she found the perfect fish-like scale in her yard, lies the way only a five year old can lie-- badly. Martha eats it up the way only a five year old can, cradling the precious thing in her hand gently. 

(Veronica doesn’t know until years and years later that she keeps it. Martha says it felt special, and was happy to receive such a lustrous gift.)

Slowly, the scales grow, stretching down her back. At this point, they become less of a secret joy and more terrifying. 

She wants to tell her parents now. 

She dreams that they grow and grow and invade everything until she is covered in them, waking up in a cold sweat, and she tries to tear them off when she wakes up with them. Veronica pulls hard, and manages to pluck a few off like scabs. As though on a timer, the rest disappear as usual. 

At school, there’s a presentation warning all the students of the monsters among us. The video tells the impressionable children to report anything odd to the authorities and their parents. In not so many words, it says that they’re terrible, and Veronica picks up on it. 

She doesn’t notice Martha put her hand over her locket briefly, scab and scale resting against one another. Martha looks briefly like she wants to say something, raise the scale and say  _ there was a monster in Veronica’s yard! _ but that would require giving away the precious little scale, wouldn’t it?

 

Veronica doesn’t tell her teachers or her parents, and that night dreams that she is drowning in scales. 

 

\--

 

Somewhere throughout the years Veronica grows too much and learns about the horrible underbelly of the once-perfect human world; the mistreatment of anything Other that has always been in her peripherals is now crashing into her because she is part of that Other. 

Sometimes she lets her scales push out in her closet, and she feels more comfortable in her own skin, but she can’t hide forever. She knows that her parents await, that life awaits. 

_ It’s not my life. I took it from someone, just by living.  _

 

\-- 

 

At ten, she finally can control her forms fully; no longer do scales sprout at random, and Veronica can stretch herself into a dragon at the drop of a hat. She’s very proud; it took much practicing, with nobody around to teach her.

She wants to share it with someone, but nobody can know. 

 

\-- 

 

Now that she knows how to contort her form, she practically aches for it. It’s not that human is not natural to her, but rather that the forms are of equal ground, and her draconic form has been sorely underused. The magic seethes beneath her skin, and she feels uncomfortable in her fleshy body. 

She finds that she has an affinity for the night; the stars, the moon, the cool darkness. Later, she reads up and finds that creatures with an alignment towards water also tend to be drawn to the moon, what with the tides; but facts written in a secretly read library book do not matter now, for  _ she can fly. _

It’s blissful, cupping the starlight in her clumsy wings and secretly floating above the neighbourhood. 

With each flight, she gets better and better. 

On the first, she takes a brave launch out her window, desperately beating her wings to avoid the tree in the yard. She banks to hard, and the first several minutes of the flight is composed of hard flaps and desperate turns to avoid obstacles and get high enough to comfortably glide. 

At eleven, she is lithe and comfortable in the air, turning and flipping like a graceful seal. 

 

\-- 

 

Soon enough, Veronica notices an observer; sniffs him out. 

A fairy with beautiful moth like wings watches her from the brush, antennae quivering as she approaches. Veronica understands; as of now, she is somewhere between a pony and a horse in stature, and a dragon to boot. 

In quiet words, she convinces him to join her.

 

\--

 

His green wings are not meant for agility such as hers, so she coasts to allow him easy flight. 

They exchange words every now and then, briefly. Mostly, they just enjoy another fae’s company in silence, making quiet observations about the world and each other, and regaining some of the childlike joy that they both lost somewhere along the way. 

Through those soft exchanges, he laughs at her developing sarcasm that drips as easily from her maw as the water she can spew. He shares that he is but a year younger than her, and a changeling as well. 

They share their aches, their pains. Veronica flips off society for the first time, and it looks a little weird when she does it as a dragon. 

They never tell each other their real names, real identities. They are too scared.

 

\--

 

She curls her talons against his wings gently, powdering them with a luminescent green. He laughs.

She likes to think her blue scales go well with it, and convinces him to shake the dust all over her. 

The pair laugh, and mock each other.

 

\--

 

Magic begets magic; many strange things are attracted to them as easily as the pair are attracted to them. 

Nightly, Veronica goes on mythical adventures and sees wonderful things. 

It lasts three months. 

 

\-- 

 

On the third month, the boy is exposed. 

His parents-- well, they aren’t  _ really _ his parents, are they? That’s what they claim, at least. 

He is dragged away, and Veronica doesn’t see him again. 

She stops flying. 

 

\--

 

Years later, she peels her wings open again, a fully realized drake, large as a horse and quite terrifying. She wastes no time in carrying J.D.’s far up, up, up and cradling it in her jaw.

He takes it from her. 

That flight is a short one. 

 

\--

 

Her next happy flight is a month after the explosion. 

“Come on, you haven’t been a…” Martha charades a claw motion then continues, “for a while!”

Nobody really got a good look at Veronica’s form; all they know is it is big, scary, and clawed. 

“I read that it was important for changelings to spend time in their other forms,” Heather says. “And I’m curious,” she admits a little haughtily. Martha just laughs.

“Well, I’ve gone years without it, so I clearly don’t need it,” Veronica argues flippantly. 

“Do it, do it, do it,” McNamara chants traitorously, and Martha joins in with a cute giggle, and Veronica can’t say  _ no _ to that. 

She gives a deep sigh, putting her hand up to her face for dramatic effect before bringing it out. 

Martha gives a loud “ _ ooh!” _ and McNamara just claps. 

“I knew that scale was special,” Martha says out of the blue, startling Veronica’s deep throaty laugh out of her. 

Deciding to be a show off, she winks at the pair and opens her wings before shooting off, performing a myriad of twirls and flips. 

Maybe life isn’t so bad. Maybe  _ this _ is beautiful,  _ this _ is magical. 

**Author's Note:**

> The boy's wings are that of a luna moth~  
> I hope you guys liked it.  
> You can find me on tumblr @ sylph-bird-63 and at ffn as sylph-feather ;)


End file.
